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My Company is Running Oracle 7.3.1 with Oracle Financials on it. We are running another instance on Oracle 9i. We have just had problems with 9i. Oracle 7 has been running for years with almost zero problems.

We have to upgrade our system from 7, to 8i or 9i. Seeing that we are running oracle 9i with problems we are seriously thinking about downgrading our 9i DB to 8i. Should or shouldn't we and why?

For some reason or another Oracle 9i listener just stops. All you have to do to fix it is restart the listener or bounce the box. But this is strange, cause it will just stop when it feels like it. Where have the same problem with our production box also running 9i. We logged a tar, but no reply.

Another problem is when i did the Dev box (for testing) Importing schemas. You have to log onto OMS, why. I used command prompt for Import.

Another problem when i moved the scemas and tried to recompile, it gave me errors, to find out that Timestamp was causing the problem. Timestamp is a reserved word in Oracle 9i. So i had to maually change the coding to use the timestamp our developers created.

I think Oracle 9i is really not mature enough for a production environment.
Initially I had a very good oppinion on oracle 9i when I attended the courses and I test it in testing environment.
Then I heard about a lot of problems, including serious security issues, that make me feel - in a production environment, is better to wait a bit (maybe half a year) and then implement/upgrade...
But don't give up easily - I mean don't make a long-term decision - because oracle 9i have some serious technological improvements. Oracle finally have a trend to move on to a modern technology. (Let's face it, besides the fine-looking paint in the front-end, oracle architecture isn't so modern...).
I think moving back to 8i is like a RAM upgrade: when you add some RAM, you don't seem to feel a large improvement. "Yeah!, maybe is working better...", you know. And then after a month, you pull out the new memory module, and return to the old configuration, and... "WTF!!!! Was it really moving like this sh*t before???!!! It's impossible!"...

Then, again, I don't know how big and mission-critical is your shop. If there is a banking business or smt. like this, rollback and sail to 8i, is known, is patched, is a walked way...

Originally posted by charlton For some reason or another Oracle 9i listener just stops. All you have to do to fix it is restart the listener or bounce the box. But this is strange, cause it will just stop when it feels like it. Where have the same problem with our production box also running 9i. We logged a tar, but no reply.

That doesn't tell anything about who is to blame for that. It doesn't tell anything about 9i's "immaturity". I'll give you oposite examples:
a) I have 9i instance in a production environment for about 3 months now, without any single failure or problem. How about that?
b) You'll find many posting saying something like "For some reason or another Oracle 8i listener just stops" just if you browse through postings in this forums. And I don't think Ovidius will give you an answer about how immature 8i is, and that you should wait couple of years before you upgrade to 8i from your Oracle6 instance that has been running smoothly for 10 years now.

Another problem is when i did the Dev box (for testing) Importing schemas. You have to log onto OMS, why. I used command prompt for Import.

That's nonsence. No OMS is needed at all. You can do imp, exp, SQL*Loader or any other utility from command line, like you have been able to for more than a decade.

Another problem when i moved the scemas and tried to recompile, it gave me errors, to find out that Timestamp was causing the problem. Timestamp is a reserved word in Oracle 9i. So i had to maually change the coding to use the timestamp our developers created.

That's entirely your problem, not Oracle's. You can't blame Oracle for choosing the same word for some new database element. And AFAIK, TIMESTAMP is part of ANSI standard. Besides, TIMESTAMP was a reserved word in PL/SQL allready in 8i, so you should be wise enough not to use it anywhere.

My bottom line: 9i is perfectly mature product. It had some isues, like the lately discovered security hole, but heck, which product haven't had them? The security hole was patched in less that two days! (Unless you are using Win2000 ) And who guarantees that similar holes are not still present in 8i or any other release. They are, but they simply weren't discovered yet.

Go for 9i. Don't listen to any advices against it, if they are based only on "I've heard about lots of problems, it's not mature enough...". There will allways be lot of such advices, but most of them are not based on facts or first hand experiences - they mostly originate from people who newer realy used or thoroghly tested the product.

Jurij ModicASCII a stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
24 hours in a day .... 24 beer in a case .... coincidence?

Althought I have had my differences with Jurij about 9i, I agree now with him completely. I might also sound a bit harsh Charlton but do you have someone at your firm who really knows 9i? See, upgrading from 7 do 9i is not like upgrading from Word Perfect 5.1 to Word Perfect 6. Roughly said, 9i has 4 times more features than 7. I have also had a 9i development intsance that has given me no problems for half a year.

This is a very disputable/subjective issue. You know very well is hard to say two different systems are same-tuned and similar, for the testing to be relevant...

And AFAIK, TIMESTAMP is part of ANSI standard...
Yes is right, and even if was not when the developer did their work, is not pardonable, because any word that has a "english-technical" flavour have to be "protected". Really, for this issue there are the developers to blame.

And I don't think Ovidius will give you an answer about how immature 8i is...
I think Jmodic understant very well what I want to say, as long as he did not comment my observation regarding oracle moving to a modern technology...
Yes, Jmodic, there could be very many issues in 8i, but for 8i were many years to dig them down, for 9i is hardly one and you saw what big holes they find out. This is a general rule, Jmodic, and I think you know it VERY WELL: if there is a mission-critical shop, nobody change dramatically the system, nobody step over two version at once, nobody take any hazardous risks like puttung in place a new system. It has to be burn-in by other not so mission critical business first.
This is how we do, and we learn this from the americans themselves.
No, Jmodic, this was not "let's say something" advice. Really, I could not state here more than my own oppinion, of course - who could do more? - but for a banking environment the advice was pretty clear: think twice, and then think again.